White emerges when all wavelengths of light reflect off an object with equal intensity, much like how white noise distributes its amplitude across its entire frequency range. Examples abound: running water, the whir of a fan, the hum of a vacuum.
Read More
Terminal Degrees by Angela Townsend
I have letters after my name, but they are profane, so I do not use them. The saints in the catacombs would rise up and declare me anathema if I did. But the transcript says what it says.
Read More
In the Rearview by Gaye Brown
When you become invisible, as widows do, you welcome opportunities to reappear.
Read More
The Things Not Seen by Krista Lee Hanson
If you are going to stare. If we must be so visible. I want you to know some of the depth, the multitude, the layers of us.
Read More
Memory Waltz by Anne Gudger
I imagined my giant Scrabble board and a pile of letter tiles. Extra vowels, too many U’s. Searching. Wanting to make sense of where I was at with my mom and where she was with herself. Do my memories get erased too when she erases hers?
Read More
Broom Rituals by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
This is how we broom. How we gather dust. A modified ritual of palimpsestic movement. Ceremony in cipher. How we move in the old ways that remain beyond a centuries-long violence.
Read More
Precious Cargo by Felicia Zamora
A honey bee knows the outcome of haste and yet, she is here, in the light. She lives fully, either always in fear of, or without fear of, death attached to her actions.
Read More
Wolf Biter by Sarah Viren
When our habits deform our bodies, we can’t hide the proof of what we do.
Read More
Brief Histories by Joe Bonomo
These images commingle now in memory as my first headlong descent into the strangeness of grief.
Read More
A Mother is Not a Zero-Sum Game by Elaine van der Geld
Before I became one, I’d never been interested in mothers. Those lumpen creatures with sagging faces, boxy, careless clothes, bad hair, beholden to a small dictator. Certainly, I’d never become one.
Read More
Of Places and Passports by Shazia Rahman
Let me pledge allegiance to the planet. Let me list all the places I love on a passport that actually represents my sense of belonging and identity.
Read More
Daddy by Alex Ebel
Pacing the halls of my house in a pair of penny loafers so dusty they might have been robbed from a grave, I counted on trembling fingers all the ways my night could unfold.
Read More
Black Widow Spider by Sherry Shahan
I stood in the bathroom where they were strongest, inhaling sprays, sticks, and creams, wondering if my parents even liked each other.
Read More
Reconsider the Lobster by Kathryn Gougelet
The black eyes of one of the biggest ones swiveled, probing the air for information about this sterile fluorescent place. Its eyes swiveled in our direction. Fisherman and writers: we were a human blur.
Read More
Only Obligation by Kathryn Waring
Obligation, defined as: “an act to which a person is morally or legally bound.” Or, as a verb: “to make someone indebted by conferring a kindness.”
Read More
Neural Pathways to Love by Jody Keisner
Time plus love equals ordinary disappointments, which as it turns out, has been enough to harm the good feelings and brain reactions Jon and I used to have for one another.
Read More
Leatherface by Carol Claassen
“In the past two years she’s known him, he’s told her almost everything about the movie. No surprises. She knows how it ends.”
Read More
Home by David L. Ulin
“Still, what else does New York provoke but memory — for me, anyway, who hasn’t lived here for more years than my children have been alive?”
Read More
The Last Missouri Aspens by Annie Sand
I glanced at the photograph: a teardrop shape, the size of my palm, its edges toothed with soft points curving up from stem to tip, a yellow aspen leaf. Bigtooth aspens are common in Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, but not in Missouri, where differences in climate and soil hem their natural range. I’d been told that somewhere in Adair County, in a nature preserve called Big Creek, was the last stand of bigtooth aspen known to exist in the state. When I’d found out, I’d immediately called my mother.
“I’ve got your trees,” I told her.
Read MoreWe, Little Griefs by Brit Barnhouse
Who knew sand could inspire We
baked in the sun I climbed into caves